“Thursday was huge first, our replacements arrived, and second we are now making asphalt on base. I know for most of you this is humdrum news, but for us civil engineers, it is a banner day. More pavements faster and cheaper,” Lt. Col. Greg Rosenmerkel emailed his friends near the end of his deployment. His team celebrated with Mountain Dew.
As Rosenmerkel completed his six-month deployment to Iraq, he emailed his friends with a list of the things he would and wouldn’t miss about Iraq. In addition to dust, mud, wind, heat, cold showers in the winter, and warm showers in the summer, here are some others he wouldn’t miss:
Getting dressed in the middle of the night to walk outside to the porta-john, wearing 40 lbs. of body armor and Kevlar helmet after a morning run with a 40-year-old back, the nauseating smoke from the burn pit, showering in a small, hot, crowded, stinky, muddy trailer with a dozen other guys, and waking up to the CRAM shooting down a mortar.
He also wouldn’t miss the painful experience of attending memorial services, but all was not bad in Iraq. Rosenmerkel had a few things he would miss: bottled water everywhere and running into old friends from previous deployments and air bases. He’d also miss church in the expandable shelter because “everyone there wants to be there.”
“This was possibly my last opportunity to be a commander of my Airmen, a group at the level in which I see them all every day. They were a joy and an inspiration to strive to be the kind of leader they deserve. New Army friends, a totally different culture some of it I liked, most of it I respected. They were all deployed at least twelvemonths,” he wrote.
There were two things he’d miss watching: F-16s take off in the dark with full afterburner (the sound of freedom) on the way home from the office and the incredible dedication of so many people.
Most importantly he’d miss feeling like a day’s work will make someone’s life better. And as the author of Ecclesiastes concludes, such satisfaction in one’s work is from the hand of God.
Enable me to find inherent satisfaction in the work you have given me, knowing that the work of my hands comes from your hand.
“A man can do nothing better than to eat and drink and find satisfaction in his work. This too, I see, is from the hand of God.” (Ecclesiastes 2:24)